Turns out the Internet is not that evil after all

Scholars say that humans do feel empathy online. We can be moved by what happens on the internet and we carry that to our interactions beyond it.NYT News Service | June 20, 2016, 09:49 IST

At the climax of "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective," our rubber-faced hero has a showdown with a woman who he suspects was once a man.

Not that she's called "transgender". There was little culturally suspect then about playing gender identity for laughs. Instead the scene's prevailing emotion is of nose holding disgust.

How, in the span of just two decades, did transgender people go from being an acceptable target of movie bigotry to being a group whose rights are now championed by presidential order?

People in the movement for transgender equality cite many reasons for rising acceptance, among them the spillover effects of the gay rights movement and a sustained effort by transgender activists, entertainers and ordinary people to make themselves and their lives more visible.

Many in trans community will tell you that the social network has played an indispensable role in changing for the better what it's like to live as a transgender person in the US. It has become a tool for visibility and equality.

"Now you can see real life transgender people. You can hear their stories. You can see the parents who have transgender children. Just imagine what kind of impact that has had," said Aidan Key, a transgender rights organiser.

The idea of a social network prompting tolerance may sound more than a tad dreamy in an election year marked by interminable online strife. There is now widespread concern that online news is pushing people toward adopting more polarised points of view. Interacting on the internet, it is usually assumed, dehumanises us all. Every day brings fresh horrors from our dystopian online life. Yes, the internet on most days feels like a cesspool.

But the experiences of transgender people on Facebook suggest that these assumptions aren't so open-and-shut. Scholars say that humans do feel empathy online. We can be moved by what happens on the internet and we carry what happens there to our interactions beyond it.